


arrival

by spacegirlkj



Series: the space between us [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 2001 a space odyssey references out the wazoo, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Astronauts, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Character Death, Weddings, death as a concept and morality as a concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 17:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegirlkj/pseuds/spacegirlkj
Summary: sound cannot travel in a vacuum, and oikawa wants to hear hinata's heartbeat again.-a sequel to ten thousand to one





	arrival

**Author's Note:**

> this was hell to write if imbeing honest but im so happy its done. its been almost a year since i wrote ten thousand to one and my style has evolved so im praying to god this is somewhat okay and you enjoy it and everything i had to spin in order to get it done
> 
> this au contains references to a ridiculous amount of sci fi and fantasy movies. comment them below if you notice them. also youre all obligated to watch 2001 a space odyssey now sorry i dont make the rules
> 
> thank you to mooks mooksmookin for being my ultimate hype friend and beta, this would be impossible without you holy shit it really wouldnt be made
> 
> okay enough rambling: enjoy the angsty gays 
> 
> ps this is for day 5 outer space im uploading this at 1247am just like the other fic for old times sake ahhahaha

Oikawa likes to think about gravity. It’s relative— _everything_ is relative— time and space and the force that’s pushing and pulling the entire universe together and apart. Oikawa used to make peace with the fact that it was a certainty, but after two years of uncharted space travel in a broken space ship when everyone thinks you’re dead, there’s not much certainty on being pulled down too fast and crash-landing anywhere.

No, it’s not Newton’s or Einstein's gravitational theories that keeps Oikawa’s heart from slipping out of his throat on an unplanned descent to Earth. Rather, it’s the kind of gravity that’s kept him tethered to ginger hair and brown eyes and freckles, that laugh that sounds like church bells if they weren’t so off key. Oikawa is unexplainably and irreversibly drawn to Hinata Shouyou, a person, _his_ life and love, science or theorem be damned.

So he grins, and he smiles, and he closes his eyes as the little escape shuttle plummets towards the blue blanket he calls home, laughs and counts the seconds until he’ll be back into Hinata’s arms.

—

_334 days until arrival_

Oikawa hovers a few feet above his computer, lip caught between teeth as he continues writing up the daily report on the experiment. It’s all scientific words for _no new breakthroughs_ but someone has to do it, and today, Oikawa drew the short straw. It wasn’t always this dull— hell, he could hardly call an experiment of the gravitational effects on substances dull, not when he’s in space— but for now Oikawa is stuck using those language courses and his articulate wording for quite possibly the more dry scientific journal to date.

It’s as he finishes up the last sentence of the log and saves it to be edited and sent out later that 70s pop band _ABBA’s_ smash hit _Head Over Heels_ crackles through the stations speakers. Oikawa rolls his eyes, setting the computer to sleep before floating out of the lab area, making sure to secure the safety door behind him. From there, he can hear a familiar groan ring from his left, making a smile slip across Oikawa’s face as he propels himself that way.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Oikawa hears Kuroo exclaim as he pulls himself into the small rec room area where he is. “Oikawa, go fucking tell Daishou to turn of his hippy music—”

“It’s my personal time~!” Oikawa sings, ignoring him as he drifts forwards. “You get to put up with it while you check the plants.”

Kuroo stares him down, eyes narrowed, before playfully shoving Oikawa out of the doorway. “You know you could’ve done it.”

“We have a deal— I do particles, you do plants,” Oikawa reminds him. “Plus, I have a hot date.”

Kuroo fake gags as he grabs onto one of the handles and pushes himself down to the lab where Oikawa came. Oikawa can’t bring himself to get upset as the anticipation buzzes inside his chest. He moves towards the back of the recreation area where a small communications room is. Oikawa pulls open the door, sliding it closed behind him. The personal communication area isn’t big by any means, but there’s enough space for Oikawa to stretch out or sit down comfortably.

The computer screen flickers on at his entrance, displaying a message that reads _INCOMING TRANSMISSION: PERSONAL, FOR OIKAWA TOORU_. Oikawa accepts the transmission, leaning closer to the camera as he waits for the connection to become secure and sent through. It takes a minute or so for a video to flicker on, displaying Hinata’s expectant face, eyes wide with excitement as he catches sight of Oikawa’s face.

“Hey there,” Oikawa says, not being able to contain the smile that stretches wide across his face. “I love you.”

There’s a delay— Oikawa counts the seconds, _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,_ all the way until sixteen before Hinata reacts, blush pixelated but still red, eyes flickering down from the camera to the monitor. Oikawa floats back a little bit, watching as he responds.

“I love you too,” Hinata says. “I missed you.” he coughs, licking lips lips before a smile breaks wide across his face. “Did anything happen yet? With your experiment, I mean.”

Oikawa sighs. “Shouyou, I wrote the most _beautiful_ journal about how absolutely nothing has happened yet,” he tells him. “Substance studies are so long term— the plants are showing more of a change now. The real fun starts when we reach Mars.”

Oikawa takes the time in the delay to study Hinata’s face— his freckles have multiplied again, meaning he had gotten some sun. There’s flyaways making his fluffy hair seem even fluffier, probably washed earlier in the morning.

“You gonna remember how to walk when you get there?” Hinata teases softly.

Unspoken: sixty days until Mars, another few hundred until Oikawa gets back.

Repeated, both ways, without words: _I miss you, I miss you, I miss—_

“Love, I’m gonna be so strong on Mars,” Oikawa promises, suppressing the ache. “But enough about me, I wanna hear about you. How was your day?”

Hinata’s eyes meet his through the camera as he pushes his hair back, launching into a detailed account of a new crepe recipe he tried to cook at the café, only to realize it required four kinds of alcohol he didn’t really want to buy. There’s another story, of a dog, _Tooru you should’ve seen him, he was so chubby—_ and another of how he made shortcake and ate it on the little balcony of their home back on Earth. Oikawa listens to it all with such incredible fondness, resting his chin on his hand as he inches forwards, careful not to press any buttons as he watches Hinata animatedly explain every little detail from start to finish. Oikawa admires him, traces the emotions and curves and quirks of his face with his fingertips across the screen, love carrying across the thousands and thousands of miles that keep them apart.

Eventually, they both fall almost silent, Oikawa singing softly under his breath, drawn as close to the camera as he can be as if it were possible to transcend space and have Hinata in his arms. It feels like no time has passed at all, and yet the timer counts down minutes before Oikawa has to go until, counts up the minutes that he’s spent overtime talking, a reminder that he should get back to work and turn away from Hinata’s face.

This part, this is the part that hurts the most. The scheduling, the planning, the _‘D’you think we can talk tomorrow?’_ and the _‘Well then, what about the day after?'_  that tears open the bubble they’ve constructed and opens them to the reality of the situation— long distance is 2.99 times ten to the eight times harder when you’re headed to Mars.

“I love you, Shouyou,” Oikawa tells him. “More than anything can describe. Sleep well, okay?”

Hinata hums, blinking slowly. “I love you too, Tooru. Don’t work yourself too hard, promise?”

Oikawa smiles. “Promise,” he says. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Hinata repeats, whispering soft, brushing his hand across the camera as if it were his face before the screen goes black, harsh, green letters reading _TRANSMISSION ENDED._

And here’s something they don’t tell you about space— it’s quiet enough to warp your mind into hearing ringing, to pick up on the sounds so small no one else would think to notice them. Oikawa can hear his heartbeat, and the vent system, and the hum of the propulsion, and the _creak_ of some distant mechanic and the bass of 70's disco pop all at once, so faint it should just be background noise. Instead, it’s the loudest thing beside his thoughts, looping over and over, crying out for the person he had just said goodbye to.

There’s a knock on the door, shocking Oikawa out of his thoughts. He straightens at the same time as it pulls open, revealing Ushijima’s face, a look of surprise that Oikawa usually finds condescending. For now, he doesn't have the energy to be annoyed, puts back on the easy smile as he floats past.

“You stayed over your limit again,” Ushijima reminds him.

Oikawa shrugs, lying back so that he’s horizontal to the floor. “Ah, but you were the one who let me,” he chides. “Either way, it’s yours now. See you, Ushiwaka.”

Oikawa doesn’t stick around to see his curt nod, making his way back to the lab to run formulas and equations once again. As he does so, he feels the longing, feels the pull back to Earth tug through his every vein. The music stops, shut off as Daishou probably switches places with Akaashi piloting. It becomes more silent than it had been before.

—

_6 hours since arrival_

_“Marry me, Shouyou.”_

The words sit on Oikawa’s lips as tests are ran, people moving around him and asking him questions, blurring together as he waits for everything to finish. They’ve let Hinata in the room with him, and he holds onto Oikawa’s hand so tightly he thinks his fingers may break. It’s a good kind of pain, like the gravity of Earth that feels like fifty tons on his back. Oikawa wants nothing more to leave this room— what is it? An office, a checkup area, he isn’t sure— and head home with Hinata, sleep next to him and tell him how much he’s missed his face, how he’s immortalized it through photographs and memories and playbacks of videos he wished he took more of.

“You need to stay before you can head home,” someone says. “We don’t know how stable you are and there’s extensive questioning that needs to be done as we finish running tests, so...”

The voice drifts off, Oikawa’s eyes trained onto Hinata and nothing else. _I don’t care,_ he thinks, and the other people in the room laugh— did he say that out loud? Hinata hasn’t stopped smiling, eyes watering again as he runs a hand through Oikawa’s hair.

“We’ve waited this long,” Hinata whispers, voice cracking. “We can wait a little longer.”

The thing is, Oikawa doesn’t want to wait. He wants to sleep on his bed and put that ring he bought years ago onto Hinata’s left hand like he should’ve back then, before he left for a doomed mission to regret it because he had waited.

But Hinata looks at him with such reverence, like he can’t believe he’s alive, and Oikawa crumbles, nods, whispers _okay_ and goes along with it because it’s what he wants. And Hinata squeezes his hand, and Oikawa squeezes back, and they’re _together._ Once again, they’re _together._

—

_328 days until arrival_

Some days, Oikawa sits in the pilot’s area, watching the main comm’s log flicker as Daishou answers NASA’s calls and Akaashi corrects course. He’s really only there to lighten up the mood— and prevent Daishou from playing his music, but that’s besides the point. Ushijima— Commander Ushijima, if Oikawa is upholding titles— will kick him out even if he’s pretending to be busy, so there’s no use in asking if he can help out with dreary tasks that he knows the two can do on their own.

Oikawa straps himself into the copilot seat, leans back so that he can stare at the red planet in front of them, noting how every day, it looks bigger. Everyone is anxious— not fearful, but excited— waiting for the moment that they can begin their descent down to the surface of a planet hardly explored.

Oikawa could stare forever, but the cockpit doesn’t have the best view, so he tears his eyes away and examines the control panel. He’s flown the ship in simulations, but never in their voyage, not being listed as a pilot for the sake of this mission. Still, he can name the buttons and their controls like he uses them everyday, knows where each is like the dishes and glasses in the kitchen cupboards back at home. He goes through them as he kills time, names each switch. It takes awhile for some of them, the uses not coming as quickly purely because this _isn’t_ what he does everyday, but Oikawa doesn’t dwell on it too much.

“Oikawa,” Akaashi says, reaching in front of him to turn a knob. “You’re in my space.”

Akaashi isn’t always that clipped with his tone, Oikawa knows. But he’s cold with his words when he’s working and lets his hair down when he isn’t, and Oikawa respects that. It doesn’t stop him from sighing over dramatically, untethering himself from the chair to float towards the ceiling.

“There really is no need for you to be piloting right now,” Oikawa comments. “Let HAL do it.”

“The _autopilot_ —” Akaashi corrects, leaning back into his seat. “—does not do everything, because it is not a robot—”

“Artificial intelligence.”

“—and it cannot process like a person, nor does it, thankfully, have the capacity to kill us all,” Akaashi finishes.

“So you _have_ seen _A Space Odyssey_ then!” Oikawa exclaims. He spins around, pushing off the wall to drift over to Daishou. “Take that, that’s three out of the five of us who have seen it, and I haven’t even cracked Ushijima yet.”

“If you _ever_ get him to see that sorry excuse of a film, I’ll watch it,” Daishou drawls. “Until then, you’re still a nerd for naming the autopilot after a fictional robot.”

“AI, Dai-chan, AI,” Oikawa scolds.

“Call me that again, I _dare_ you,” Daishou hisses, pulling the headset off on ear as he turns to face him. Oikawa cackles at his anger, kicking off his chair to propel himself out of the cockpit and back towards the lab.

 _Anxious,_ he thinks, left alone with that revelation from earlier. _Anxious to land, anxious to call, anxious to get home, anxious, anxious._ It feels oddly foreboding, this dread that sits in him and stirs around with the excitement inside of him. Maybe it’d be easier to stomach if he was making more progress with his calculations in the experiment. Maybe it’s all because of a ginger back on Earth tracing his hands over the night sky, spotting the red planet and sending a wish towards him.

Oikawa rubs his eyes, taking note that he should probably remove his contacts in a few hours— how long has he been wearing them?— as he presses the button to the lab door, watching as it opens and reveals Kuroo, hunched over his portion of the experiment. So far, he’s been reaping the most success, studying plants grown in zero gravity and if it’s possible for them to be transplanted on Mars and how it affects chemistry of the plant itself. Oikawa’s work strips away all of the life from it, looks at the particles and what moves them, all while also trying to solve some kind of rewrite of another gravitational formula to compensate for new discoveries. He loves math, loves numbers and things infinitesimal, but the weight of everything invisible that doesn’t seem to be on his side is a lot to bear with the last days of space travel being upon them.

“You here to run formulas again?” Kuroo asks, looking up from his note pad.

Oikawa nods, blinking harshly to clear his vision. “As always,” Oikawa smiles bitterly, taking a seat at his work laptop, grabbing a whiteboard marker kept velcroed to the table and pulling off the cap between his teeth. He spits it out, watches it float for a few seconds, then turns to Kuroo, chest somehow heavier than before.

“Tell me this is all worth it,” Oikawa says. “That this isn’t just wasted effort chasing smoke.”

“It’s worth it,” Kuroo repeats without hesitation. He shuts his notebook at the same time Oikawa begins running numbers, running some through the computer at the same time that he works others out on the board. The cap hits him in the nose, and Oikawa grabs it out of the air without looking up and clips it onto the back of the marker. There’s a few more minutes of silence, and an **_ERROR, FAILED CALCULATION_ ** message, before Kuroo speaks.

“Oikawa, do you feel like there’s something missing?” Kuroo asks.

Oikawa swivels around to face him, furrowing his brow. “If you mean the experiment, then, yeah, of course.”

“No, I—” Kuroo sighs heavily. “Listen, I’m a great guy. I’m the laid back one, usually, but I can’t help feeling like there’s a clock constantly ticking, like I’m _antsy._ I want that stability back.”

“You’re in the wrong profession for that,” Oikawa tells him, keeping his demeanour even as he works through another problem. It fails. “Nothing is guaranteed up here, and it won’t be on Mars either. If you’re asking me if I’m having cold feet about living on that planet, then it’s a no.”

“Oikawa,” Kuroo says, exasperated. “I’m not asking about the red planet.”

 _Oh,_ Oikawa thinks, his train of thought stopping.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Kuroo says, watching as Oikawa realize what he’s talking about. “Do you feel like you left loose ends with Hinata?”

Oikawa licks his lips, remembers that night they spent in the pickup of his truck, watching the stars on the outskirt of the city, remembers the weight in his coat pocket never opened. “I— I was—” Oikawa falters, not knowing how to admit what he’s trying to say. “I was going to. Propose, I mean. Had the ring and everything.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kuroo asks.

Oikawa shrugs, confronting the truth he’s pondered so many times before. “I can’t understand it now. Something about fear. It just feels unfinished now, like I left him before we were ready or— or something,” he says. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t know how to describe it. I regret it every day.”

There’s a lapse in words where the silence speaks for them, where Oikawa realizes the error message is still blinking on his laptop and that he hasn’t written anything down again. He clears his throat, connects the board and the marker back to the velcro. “I don’t think that’s the reason why I’m on edge, though,” he adds.

“Ah, but isn’t it?” Kuroo asks wryly. Oikawa faces him, something knotting in his throat. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“More than anything,” Oikawa says. Immediate. No delay, without missing a beat. Truthful, the constant lingering in the back of his mind.

“So isn’t that why you feel like you’re chasing smoke? You’re chasing _him_ ,” Kuroo says.

Oikawa wonders if this weight pressing down on him from all sides could be called suffocating, or if that’s an exaggeration to the extent that he misses Hinata. “Well, what about you?” he asks, trying to spin the conversation away from himself. His voice cracks a little, and he rubs his eyes again, fatigue catching up with him.

Kuroo drops the leisurely attitude, sitting upright. “Oikawa, your eyes are red, you need to take out your contacts.”

“I will,” Oikawa mutters, rolling his eyes in effort to act aloof. It doesn’t work.

“Go to bed, for god’s sake,” Kuroo tells him. “Listen, I’m A-okay here, this experiment is fantastic whether your overworking brain tells you so or not, and we are headed to _Mars._ Just take care—”

Kuroo is cut off by the sound of the lab door sliding open, Ushijima making his way in, surveying the scene with a furrowed brow. They both turn to face him, watching how he so obviously looks at their lack of work at the moment, disappointment flickering across his face as he looks down at them.

“You’re not working,” he states, eyes locking onto the error message on Oikawa’s laptop. “Why?”

Oikawa narrows his eyes, opening his mouth to bite out a comment only for Kuroo to smoothly interject.

“We were talking about something. Personal somethings,” Kuroo tells him.

Ushijima cocks his head. “That isn’t work, and you two are supposed to be working. You only have so many days left of being in zero gravity to work on the segment,” he comments. “So why aren’t you making the most of it? This is childish.”

“Can you take a hint?” Oikawa snaps, meeting his eyes. “This _work_ isn’t everything.”

“It’s bigger than your feelings,” Ushijima tells him. “We are working for something bigger than one person.”

Kuroo looks from Ushijima to Oikawa, mediating tone clear. “Oikawa—” he warns in vain.

“God, do you realize that some of us have people to get back to?” Oikawa says, curling his lip. “That some of us, that— you know what? You’re right— that _I_ have someone I love, that I think about as often as, _more_ than what we do here. And all of this means _nothing_ to me in scale to him.”

“You’re being selfish,” Ushijima scolds. “You’re jeopardizing this—”

“I am _not_ jeopardizing this by sorting out my emotions. If anything, I’m making myself more productive or something,” Oikawa seethes. “But yeah, I _am_ selfish, if that means I think about the person I’m in love with outside of the allotted time schedule, which seems like a decent thing to me. So what does that make you?”

Fact: In a vacuum, sound cannot travel. There is oxygen in the cabin, but Oikawa tears a hole through it all, replaces it with pure tension and a glare fueled by longing.

Fact: Space is eerily quiet, and space station laboratories are mind numbingly loud when you get into a shouting match with your commander.

Ushijima doesn’t speak for a long time, not breaking the challenge of Oikawa’s glare as Kuroo stands by, halfway caught between reaching a hand forwards to calm Oikawa and backing away. The anger isn’t what hurts, isn’t what draws the knot in Oikawa’s throat tighter, but it fuels the ache burning inside of him as Ushijima speak.

“There is a reason you are not and will not be commander,” Ushijima says. “Your worthless pride is what holds you back. You speak from emotion, not from logic. You’re capable of doing your job, but not separating it from yourself.” He looks from Oikawa to Kuroo, then back again. “Kuroo is right— overworking is detrimental to your health and productivity. I’ll see you both at 0800 hours.”

On that note, he leaves, shutting the door being them and sealing the vacuum of silence that makes the furious thrum of Oikawa’s heartbeat deafening in his ears. You can’t slump without gravity, but you can let yourself go, let everything be suspended like the feelings tugged across heartstrings that feel too tight after everything. The knot in Oikawa’s throat threatens to break, and Kuroo grabs onto his shoulders.

“Hey,” he says, voice low. “He’s not right about that— about your attachment making you lesser. Do you know what makes you more likely to survive out of you and me?”

Oikawa shakes his head.

“You’re not living just for yourself. You said it— there’s someone waiting, back there on Earth for you. And when you’re that close to death, that certainty, that urge to live for him, for your Hinata, will be what pushes you further,” Kuroo tells him.

“And you?” Oikawa asks. “Isn’t there someone in your corner back at home?”

Kuroo shakes his head. “Not like you and Hinata. You’re something special. And by something immeasurable, you’ll fight to hold onto that.”

Oikawa exhales, the truth of Kuroo’s words permeating his skin, sinking deep into his bones. “Thank you,” he says, not knowing what else to say. “I should sleep. Night, Kuroo.”

“Don’t stay up thinking,” Kuroo advises him. “Night.”

On his way back through the station towards the sleeping quarters, Oikawa hears his name called. He turns around, faces Ushijima once again, and tenses.

“Oikawa, you should know I meant no offense by our discussion, and I take no offense from your statement,” he tells him. “You’re a very hard worker.”

“Thank you, Ushijima,” Oikawa says curtly, moving past him. “I’m headed to bed now. See you at 0800.”

It’s what he leaves in lieu of a goodbye, travelling towards the sleeping quarters. Oikawa removes his contacts with expert precision, puts them with the rest of his valuables and tucks himself into the straps of his bed. There’s a photo on the side of him and Hinata, a polaroid. He’s pressing a kiss to Hinata’s jaw, and Hinata is shying away, giggling in a blur as the photo was taken. It’s from a while ago, dated back months before Oikawa left, holding in all of the warmth and carefree energy of love without barriers. Oikawa thumbs Hinata’s freckled blush, swallows down the emotion that clouds his mind and closes his eyes, giving into exhaustion in the hope that he is what he dreams.

—

_3 days since arrival_

Hinata has to walk Oikawa through their shared apartment, supporting the taller’s body weight on his shoulder. It’s his first time in the flat in two years, and there’s no way he can lesson the swell of emotions as Oikawa looks at it— at the new plants in the place of old ones that had died, the different drapes on the kitchen window, the fridge magnets still how they were when he left, immaculate and untouched from the little poem he made with the words. It hurts, more than he can describe, reminds him of how long he’s spent away. At the same time, it makes everything taste sweeter, from the woody scent of the room, to the warm hardwood under his feet.

“Can we go to the bedroom?” Oikawa asks, but it comes out more like a whisper as he looks back down to the wide eyed Hinata who nods, reaching with his free hand to brush Oikawa’s hair from his eyes. Together, they make their way up the staircase to where the bedroom lies, in a room illuminated by the moonlight, practically frozen in time since he had last saw it.

Hinata had kept his clothes, meaning he’s able to change into a pair of boxers and a sweatshirt from his old university, but no comfort from the garments matches that of Hinata’s hands, coaxing him towards the haphazardly made bed with sheets and covers askew. Oikawa laughs softly as Hinata manages to tug the blankets up towards him, covering his legs before crawling onto the other side and slipping underneath beside him. Oikawa catches his cheek in the palm of his hand, brushes a thumb over his lips, watches how Hinata’s eyes flutter to a close as he breathes into the familiar touch.

“You look like how I remember you the most,” Oikawa murmurs, shifting his body so they’re facing each other. It takes too much energy, too many muscles. “Glowing even when the moon is out, shining brighter than any star I’ve ever seen.”

“Tooru,” Hinata hums, opening his eyes to look up at him. He holds his gaze with wide, warm eyes, adoring and drinking in the colours of night against his face. Oikawa breathes his name in return, so silently it seems secret, intimate beyond the english language and with love stitched into every syllable.

“Shouyou, kiss me,” Oikawa rasps, swallowing sand and licking his lips. “Please.”

Hinata exhales heavy, as if he had been waiting for permission to touch him. With the softness of water caressing his skin, Hinata presses their lips together, slow, languid, with saccharine softness in every second they touch. With eyes still closed, Hinata pulls away, eyelids flickering open to match Oikawa’s gaze for a split second before falling back into him.

And if the first kiss was a ripple in a river, this kiss is a hurricane, ripping through Oikawa with intensity that swirls behind his teeth and down his throat, draws them together with some indescribable force of gravity that keeps them locked together, breathing in each other’s skin. Hinata’s fingers tangle in Oikawa’s hair, pulling him closer than before so that he’s almost sitting in Oikawa’s lap. With his lip between his teeth, Oikawa breaks apart only for a moment, enough so that he can see the look of bliss across Hinata’s face, mirroring the euphoria that buzzes in Oikawa’s chest. He connects their lips again, slipping his tongue against Hinata’s and humming as small hands play with the hairs at the base of his neck. Oikawa lifts up Hinata’s shirt, sliding a hand up his side and taking pride in how he shivers.

They’ve been apart too long since Oikawa’s landed— checkups and recounts and test after test taken before he was finally allowed home. For now, he forgets about the rest of the world, the rest of the universe lying outside of his window, lays Hinata down against the lemon scented sheets of the bed, _their_ bed, kisses him with the love he’s felt for every second he’s been away. There’s so much to relearn— a new scar on his hand, a burn near his wrist, freckles that have faded from cheekbones that used to be full. Hair fluffier, nails longer, scratching down his back in a way that Oikawa can tell is supposed to be gentle from the shudders it sends up his spine. The pressure is too much to tickle, too pronounced to be an accident, and somehow, from the way Hinata’s lips twitch against his, he can tell it’s intentional.

Rib bones on either of them are too close to the surface, feel too much like climbing ladders with fingertips when they memorialize each other’s body with their hands. Oikawa presses his face to the base of Hinata’s neck as he runs his hands over his hips, kisses warm and opened mouth on Hinata’s pulse point, the spot that still makes him arch his back and curl his toes. As the mark begins to form, Oikawa moves on, trailing his tongue across Hinata’s jaw before moving back to his mouth, where Hinata practically pulls him down to bring them back together. Distantly, he can feel tears pressing cool against his cheek, but there’s no reason to wipe them away when Hinata is kissing him fervent, with ferocity and need that makes Oikawa dizzy.

 _I’m home,_ he thinks to himself, with hands splayed across his shoulders and Hinata on his lips. _I’m home._

—

_321 days until arrival_

Oikawa sits in the curve of the window, nose pressed against the glass like a child, admiring Mars’ red glow. They’re hours away from landing, so close to the furthest explored piece of space by mankind. It’s groundbreaking, breathtaking, the stars that swirl around Oikawa taking a backseat to the ever burning glow of red dust and earth below. He could get drunk on the view, like lips that taste like the essence of cherry wine. Oikawa takes a picture, makes note to send it to Hinata and tell him how much the red reminds him of his hair.

His communications earpiece blinks from where it floats in front of him, and reluctantly, Oikawa picks it up, holding it to his ear to hear the incoming message.

 _“Hey, I’m in the lab doing some last minute records,”_ Kuroo says. _“When do I need to be strapped in and in my suit?”_

 _“I already have mine on,”_ Ushijima tells him. _“Not the helmet, but it’s good to be prepared.”_

 _“We got another hour-ish until we absolutely have to,”_ Daishou answers. _“But be ready before then, I don’t want to stall.”_

 _“I’m letting HAL—_ _the autopilot—”_ Akaashi catches himself _. “_ _—_ _take the controls. This is automated enough. Oikawa, where are you?”_

“The tertiary viewing area,” Oikawa relays, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I’m making the most of this view before it’s gone.”

 _“You’re our resident poet, or the closest thing to it,”_ Kuroo comments. _“Give me a description of what it looks like.”_

Oikawa sighs heavily, opening up his eyes again to look back out of the window. He’s looking at it all upside down, though direction has very little meaning in space by now. He hums, watching Sirius twinkle in the background, watching the horizon of Mars grow so big it encompasses half of his view.

“I see colour,” Oikawa says. “More of it than I’m used to. I’ve gotten used to the greys, the forever expanse of darkness that’s always in the peripherals of my vision. But Mars— Mars is so red. Burnt, like wood from a fire, like copper wire, like rusty spoons.” Unsaid: the colour of a lover’s lips, a lover’s hair. He twists himself so that his stomach is parallel to the floor. “It’s… alive, human. Mother Nature in every sense of the word.”

 _“Nothing is alive on Mars,”_ Ushijima interjects.

“Maybe. Maybe not— maybe it once was. Does it matter?” Oikawa asks. “It’s glowing, almost. I can see the canyons, can see thousands and thousands of kilometres in every direction.”

Everyone stays quiet for a few moments, Oikawa remembering the sensation of fingertips tracing over his ribcage. “To answer your question, Kuroo, it’s beautiful.”

 _“Well, if there’s no point in me being in the cockpit, I’ll stop by,”_ Daishou sighs. _“Akaashi, you coming with?”_

There’s a noise of agreement from Akaashi, and Oikawa pushes himself off of the wall, floating back towards the centre area of the ship. “You two get the place to yourselves— I’m gonna secure my stuff down, get what’s important all in order.”

 _“See you, then,”_ Akaashi says, and Oikawa mutes his communications again, traveling through the halls. He can feel, if not only a little, the station speed up, adjust course on its own. They’ll be leaving via a separate vessel, leaving the craft that’s been their home for nearly a year to orbit Mars on its own. He can’t help but feel a little sentimental, leaving his temporary home up here alone.

Something else twists inside of Oikawa— the kind of feels before a roller coaster drops. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t understand why it feels the way it does. He doesn’t push it aside, internalizing the feeling as he slips into the cabin for the last time, looking over all of the things that he chose to leave behind. Books read and reread, mainly. Not much else stays, the photos all tucked into the pockets of Oikawa’s clothes for safe keeping, leaving the room stripped bare.

It doesn’t feel like a home. Not like this.

Oikawa chews his lip, pushing backwards to inspect the room one last time. There’s no reason for being here, no reason for him to be wandering around, drifting like he’s lost without a cause. There’s nothing left up here to be explored, nothing left to be grabbed or inspected. Everything new awaits him down on the surface of the fourth planet from the sun.

Oikawa leaves the room, deciding to put on the space suit and get it over with. He travels down the main centre of the station, where suits are kept and where the main airlock is, next to the vessel they’ll be taking to Mars. Everything is kept vertically here, making it seem smaller than it really is. Oikawa goes through the motions, checks the tank, slips into the pants and pulls the suit over his head. He twists on the gloves, inspects the helmet on last time, holding it between covered hands.

At times like these, Oikawa closes his eyes, banishes the offset feeling, thinks about about Hinata back at home, imagines him crowded around the little TV in the café, watching the pre-broadcast show on the news. Oikawa wonders if he’s anxious to hear his voice through the comms, if the patrons are asking about him, if Hinata is telling stories and missing him just as much. Oikawa feels calmer, just knowing he’ll be watching, just knowing his eyes will be on him. It comforts his beating heart, slows it until there’s no longer the stress on his veins. Mars is so close, just within grasp, and Oikawa is—

Sound cannot travel within a vacuum.

The ship lurches, spinning towards the left, the right, whipping Oikawa up, thrashing him against the walls. He grabs hold of one of the bars, flicking his comms on as the ship continues to shake, hands shaking as he twists the helmet on as the communications crackle on.

 _“Akaashi? Daishou? Kuroo? Oikawa—_ _come in—_ _”_

“I’m here,” Oikawa says, catching his breath. The spinning hurts his head, makes his stomach travel up towards his throat. “What the hell was that?”

 _“I don’t know, but it breached the station,”_ Ushijima tells him. _“Get into your suit, oxygen pressure is depleting. Kuroo, where are you?”_

The ship lurches again, in the opposite direction this time, slamming Oikawa back against the column of the passage. Red emergency lights flash, and Oikawa can hear the whistling of air passing by. He grunts, listening to the heavy static that still bleeds through the comms.

 _“Here—”_ Kuroo rasps. _“I’m— the door— it isn’t fully sealed. Airlock door—”_

“I’m coming to get you,” Oikawa says, already moving. “Don’t talk, we don’t know how bad the breach is.”

_“Oikawa, whatever debris has hit us will likely collide with us again. We can’t risk—”_

Oikawa doesn’t listen, pushing himself through the halls, one hand close to the wall to grab onto the tethers when needed. He moves out towards the branches of the arms— the pull from the left where the tertiary viewing area is is strong enough that he nearly loses his grip on the handles on the wall. Yelping, he slams his hand down on the airlock button, shutting the passage way off as he comes to the realization that no one could survive being there when they were hit.

_Akaashi, Daishou—_

He heads back down the left arm, the pull strong but not as intense, rounding the corner as something— debris, the other arm— crashes towards the end. Oikawa clutches onto the side, feels the force rip through him as the back end of the arm is torn open. He plasters himself against the wall, panting as he holds on, directly across from the airlock button.

“Kuroo, do you read me?” Oikawa yells. “Kuroo, come in!”

 _“Oi...ka- wa,”_ Kuroo cracks, comms broken. _“Don’t you dare come get me.”_

“No—”

_“Door… It’ll hold a little, but you won’t be able to withstand the pressure— close it—”_

_“Oikawa, listen to him,”_ Ushijima commands. _“If you wait any longer—”_

“I’m not killing you, Kuroo!” Oikawa shouts. “I can make it—”

 _“You c-can’t,”_ Kuroo chokes out. _“Heh, M’dizzy.”_

 _“Oikawa, I can see the debris. You need to seal the arm,”_ Ushijima booms. _“That’s an order.”_

“I— Kuroo, I can’t just leave you—”

 _“Oikawa,_ now!”

Everything slows, like honey poured in molasses. Oikawa can feel every cell in his body screaming not to, can feel the force of the spinning turning him inside out. In his ear, his comms crack again.

 _“Please,”_ Kuroo strains.

Oikawa slams his hand down on the button, watches as the airlock shuts off Kuroo from the only shot he has at living, watches as he pushes his friend from the cliff of fate, dooms him to death in the worst way possible. The ship lurches again— less this time— and Oikawa can hear the few seconds of life be strangled from Kuroo’s throat over the comms before it rings silent.

There is no time for mourning.

“The other airlocks—”

 _“I have them sealed,”_ Ushijima informs him. _“We need to correct course— there’s no safe way to land. We need to stop spinning and propel towards Earth. Meet me in the station’s control room.”_

“Have you contacted Houston?” Oikawa asks.

_“Our communications from Earth are lost. The debris hit a receiver.”_

“Fuck,” Oikawa mutters, trying to still the tremors in his hands as he heads towards Ushijima. “Fuck fuck fuck— reverse thrusters, can you fly this thing?”

 _“In technical terms, you’re more qualified and have more training for it,”_ Ushijima tells him.

Oikawa bites down on his tongue, pushing himself into the control room and past Ushijima to strap himself into the pilot’s chair, switching off HAL and taking the manual controls. His hands fly to the buttons, and in his brain, he can hear the math equations being carried out, the fear of losing time and of fuel burning. He ignores it, ignores the static and the ringing, sets up the maneuver and straps himself in.

“Hold tight,” Oikawa warns, before flipping the switch and firing the engines, barreling them to the side. He eases up on the throttle with his other hand, looks towards Ushijima and shouts. “Change the degree to… Shit— sixty three point.. Point…”

“Sixty three,” Ushijima cuts him off, adjusting the dial. Oikawa squeezes his eyes shut, feeling the pressure on his head, feeling the G’s pull on his body, drives the throttle again and flips the switch.

“Okay, when I tell you, you need to _immediately_ get us to 180 degrees,” Oikawa instructs. “I’m gonna separate the engines, and, oh god, I’m gonna run them at opposing directions to steady us out, then we’re going straight forwards. You got that?”

“Confirmed,” Ushijima relays, voice wavering ever so slightly, hand over the knob.

“If I pass out, you _need_ to take the stick or we’re dead,” Oikawa tells him. “In three, two, one—”

Ushijima straightens the craft as Oikawa yanks back the stick, both engines slowing down the momentum and sending them forwards with enough force that Oikawa is nearly flung out of his seat. He grits his teeth, fighting the pull to keep forwards with one hand, the other easing them forwards before blasting the engines so they can propel back towards home, no longer spinning.

The force dissipates, Oikawa slumping back into his seat. He sees stars, sees Hinata’s face, sees every beautiful moment of his life leading up to this, sees Hinata’s smile and the curve of his back and his skin glowing beneath the sun and the shimmer that sheens when his eyes flutter open under the early light. Oikawa’s breath catches, sweat running down his face as his vision returns, the ringing droning lowly in the background.

“We did it,” he rasps, not believing his own voice. He turns to Ushijima, whose eyes are steely, cold.

“No,” he says. “Not yet.”

—

_13 days since arrival_

Oikawa sits in the sunset sunlight that pours in through Hinata’s café’s big wall-to-floor windows, letting it wash over his pale skin. Hinata is beside him, curled in his side, watching, shining as he eats the small meal he prepared for him. His stomach isn’t used to anything besides stretched space food rations, so there’s not much he’s allowed to eat yet. Hinata spent nearly an hour crafting the meal, and Oikawa is almost sad he can’t appreciate it more, because now he’s sure he’d eat anything not in a tube by now.

Hinata laughs as he gets sauce on the corner of his lips, wipes it off with his thumb. He doesn’t look at him with pity like most do, instead holds that world bending love in his pupils, pressed up against him as close as he can be.

“Is it good?” he asks, as if he’s worried Oikawa will say no.

“I missed your cooking,” Oikawa tells him, letting the fork slip from his fingers. He looks up as it clatters to the floor, as if he expected it to fly upwards before realizing he’s no longer in space. “Oops.”

“It’s okay,” Hinata giggles, kissing his cheek and leaning over to pick it up. “You almost ate everything, do you want more?”

Oikawa thinks for a few moments before shaking his head. “Maybe after, I don’t want to overeat.”

Hinata nods, understanding and standing up to place the plate on a nearby table. He walks back over to the couch, leaning onto Oikawa, whose arms instinctively wrap around him, holding him tight to his chest. Hinata sighs, resting his head on his chest. Oikawa feels the warmth of his body radiate through him, slips his hands through Hinata’s ginger hair and closes his eyes.

He missed this with all of his being, missed the closeness and the comfort and the way Hinata purrs against his chest. It’s so soft, so subdued, muted cars rushing past, water running through the pipes of the building, everything quiet except for Hinata’s soft breaths.

“I missed… everything,” Hinata tells him, opening up to stare Oikawa in the eye. “I don’t want to let you go.”

“Then don’t,” Oikawa tells him. “We can stay together forever.” Leaning down, Oikawa presses his forehead to Hinata’s, drawing their faces flushed. “I don’t want to have to be apart from you that much, ever, ever again.”

“Forever,” Hinata repeats, hands tracing up and down Oikawa’s bicep. He looks away from Oikawa’s eyes, drifting his gaze down his face before pulling away to better look into his eyes. He swallows thickly, the way he always does when he’s thinking, chews the inside of his cheek as he looks for the words to say.

“When… when you landed,” Hinata starts, words soft and carefully chosen. “You said…” He blinks harshly, taking another sharp breath. “You asked me to marry you. Did… did you know before you left?”

“Oh, Shouyou,” Oikawa whispers, eyes so adoring, so encompassing in their venerating gaze. “I wonder if I knew the day I met you, when you watched me spill coffee over my dynamics papers.”

Hinata laughs lightly, shaking his head. “You— you’re— you walked into my life and changed it,” he says, voice cracking, eyes glistening with water threatening to spill over.

“Mm,” Oikawa hums, pushing his face into the crook of his neck. “I love you, I love you— will you help me up?”

Hinata nods, somewhat confused but a hundred percent willing, pulling Oikawa to his feet and holding him steady when he inevitably stumbles. Even with his weakness, he’s been doing well for someone who’s spent two years in space— physically, at least. Oikawa knows Hinata has seen the way his hands shake when he closes his eyes, knows that he can’t hide the cold sweat or shivers that sometimes threaten to come back. At the very least, he can walk on his own, but still insists to have Hinata’s hand in his own as they climb the stairs to their home above the café, Oikawa taking a break every five steps, Hinata asking _do you need to stop?_ whenever he slows.

Eventually, they make it inside, and Oikawa is the one leading, tugging Hinata through the apartment to his bedroom with the hopes that his drawers have remained untouched. He’s right— Hinata looks perplexed when he opens it, riffles through until he pulls out handkerchief, knotted around the top and holding something inside. Oikawa doesn’t even bother to close the drawer, stumbles forwards and grabs Hinata’s hands, tugs him into the sunlight of their room by the armchair he remembers Hinata reading in and _god_ , he’s missed every inch of this house and his body. With shaking hands, he undoes the knot of the handkerchief, pulling away the square of cloth to reveal a small, velveteen box, one that makes Hinata’s breath catch just _knowing_ what’s inside, makes him cry before Oikawa even drops to one knee.

“I was going to give it to you that day we drove out of town and looked at the stars,” Oikawa confesses. “I figured now is as good a time as any— you should’ve had it long ago.”

And with that, he sinks down, struggles with finding the opening and almost drops the box, Hinata laughing through the snot and the tears as Oikawa opens it to reveal a slim band with a shimmering diamond. It’s surrounded by satin, golden and soft, twinkling like chandeliers and stars in the night sky.

“So, Hinata Shouyou,” Oikawa begins, looking up into his eyes. “For the sake of tradition, will you give me the honour of being your husband?”

“Yes, Tooru, a hundred times yes, please come up here and—” Hinata stammers, smiling breaking through his cheeks as Oikawa pulls himself off of the ground, jumping forwards onto Hinata to press his lips against his.

And it’s messy and it’s full of tears and neither can stop smiling, Hinata on his tiptoes to pull Oikawa down to his level, the box still in his hands. Hinata breaks the kiss and Oikawa chases it for a moment, before looking down at his hands and removing the ring, gingerly sliding it onto Hinata’s ring finger.

“I’m your fiancé,” Hinata whispers, as if he can’t believe it. “You— you’re my fiancé!”

“I’m in love with you,” Oikawa tells him. “I— I don’t ever want to let you go.”

Hinata surges forwards, throwing his arms around Oikawa’s shoulders. They nearly topple over, but Oikawa stays upright, rocks them back and forth as they laugh and cry into the warmth of each other’s necks. This is what they’ve fought for, what they’ve yearned for— this closeness and mutual adoration, this _love_ spreading its roots through their veins. It’s everything they could have hoped for and more, everything they ever dreamed of when they were hundreds of thousands of miles apart, a vacuum of space separating their bodies but not their hearts. Now, Oikawa presses kiss after kiss to Hinata’s face, cradles his shoulders and _prays_ this will last forever.

—

_301 days until arrival_

Three dead. Missing lab, missing tech room, missing leisure area. Missing communications with NASA and with Earth, missing wits, hole in the ship, hole in his suit—

Oikawa is dreaming again.

He's ripped from his bed— in the loose sense of the word. Since the accident, he's been sleeping in the cockpit, too afraid to try and sleep on the arms, too numb to face the belongings of Daishou, Akaashi, and Kuroo.

He lost his contacts, too. Unrelated, but a pain, one that makes trying to figure out how he and Ushijima can survive on what they have even more difficult.

If there's an agreement, silent, between the two of them, it's that they can't grieve. Not when they're hurtling towards Earth in the worst alignment. Not when they're trying to keep themselves sane and get back home.

They've got four months worth of food for five people, making rations not an issue for the most part. Bone density is scary to think about, but they have not the time nor the will to worry about the one percent per month that may be the slow death of them when they've already kissed death on the teeth.

So there's no time for grieving in the conscious side of Oikawa's mind. Only at night does he see their faces again, hear the sounds of Kuroo suffocating in slow motion, imagines the terror in his eyes as he claws at the airlock. Sometimes, like tonight, the scene replays in perfect clarity. Other nights, he thrashes, imagining Hinata's there with him, watching from the viewing deck as Kuroo floats lifelessly by.

So Oikawa untangles himself from the bed he's made on the side of the useless communications hub, looks at the picture of Hinata taped to the dashboard and _aches._

Hinata once said he'd wait for Oikawa, no matter how long it takes. Oikawa wonders if that's still true now that he's dead.

 _As good as dead,_ his mind bitterly supplies. He needs coffee— something they don't have on the ship. He needs sleep, too, but that's less likely than them finding out how to make contact with Earth again.

He doesn’t know what to not think about— mourning the memory of being alive, missing Hinata, or the fact that Kuroo is dead at his hands. It hurts like lemonade washed down with bleach, an ever present sting as he is reminded of them both in every part of the spaceship, Hinata in photos, Kuroo in the wiring and the technology and the memories tucked into corners of the ship.

 _I can’t stay like this,_ Oikawa thinks to himself. On the floor is a whiteboard, taped down so that it doesn’t float off. He thumbs the photo of Hinata one last time, grabs his glasses and ties them secure so that he can read the formulas he begins to write out on the board.

It’s numbing, the way the numbers flow from his mind without thought. Oikawa forces his eyes open— he doesn’t want to see the terrors lingering on the back of his eyelids— solves and resolves the problem of how they’re supposed to get home.

“Oikawa,” a voice says. Oikawa flinches, whips his head around. It’s just Ushijima, the only other person alive on board. “This is unhealthy.”

Oikawa grumbles, looking back down at the equation. “I’m trying to keep us alive.”

“You’ve written the same formula four times,” Ushijima states.

Oikawa blinks, once, twice. _Oh,_ he thinks. _So I did._

“I’ll be fine,” he sighs. “Just— give me a moment. I woke up a few moments ago.”

“You should eat and then go back to sleep,” Ushijima advises. “You won’t be able to get anything done like this.”

Oikawa nods. He’ll get something to eat in a moment, but for now he snorts bitterly, because even through his concern he can tell Ushijima is covering up the hurt just as much as he is. He erases the three extra equations and gets back to work, because it’s all he knows at this point, the only thing that gives him a sliver of chance of letting him see Hinata again.

—

_56 days since arrival_

Oikawa doesn’t take much for granted anymore, takes every little smile and ray of sunshine like a miracle, stays fascinated with the freckles that he and Hinata collect. It’s odd, being back on Earth after so long in space. His skin is washed out, but the vibrant colour returns with the sun, flecked with little marks, and he even gets to have a normal haircut for the first time. It’s _very_ strange indeed, how he’s still in the process of relearning the gravity shift and the world and how it’s changed. He needs to catch up with his friends, Iwaizumi, Hanamaki and Matsukawa still on the path to man the ISS in a few years. The same wars still rage on, but there’s a new president and they’ve found a new kind of shark and _Lorde_ has made another album since he left. Hinata is more than happy to indulge him as he goes through all the differences, relearns everything, but _god,_ does it hurt at times.

They don’t talk about space beyond Oikawa’s nightmares. Whenever he shares a memory, he freezes, and he’s _there._ Hinata is never angry when he shuts down, coasts him through the flashbacks and doesn’t make him explain.

Beyond that, his knee is still fucked from the accident. It likes to pop out of place and grind now that there’s another force pulling it down. NASA has great benefits, which obviously include physiotherapy for every part of his body that he’s managed to break in two years of uncharted space travel. Hinata joins him in every appointment, holds his hand as they stretch out his knee or sits in front of him as he moves on the treadmill.

“You’re doing great, Oikawa,” the doctor says, taking notes. “How’s the knee?”

“Hurts like hell,” Oikawa grits, still smiling as he turns to Hinata. “Dr. Fujisaka, have you met my financé?”

Hinata laughs, blushing as the doctor smiles. “You introduced me to him earlier. Another hour and you two can leave.”

Oikawa sighs heavily. After everything, this isn’t hard. After everything, this little bit of recovery is _nothing_ now that Hinata is here with him.

“Shouyou, have you thought about centrepieces yet?” Oikawa asks. “I kind of want yellow roses, but something blue would be nice too.”

Hinata looks dazed, resting his chin on his hand. “We’re getting married,” he sighs. “Maybe… forget-me-nots?”

Oikawa hums. His knee throbs in pain, but all of it is dulled as he looks at Hinata, laughing and smiling and drawing him closer with every look of love. He’s okay— he’s wonderful. He’s so, so in love it hurts in the most beautiful way possible.

—

_256 days until arrival_

Here’s the thing about being responsible for the death of your friend— it never lets you breathe. It creeps down your neck, breathes poisonous guilt into every pore, chokes out your air until you’re left gasping, grasping at straws. It alters the truth, spins twisted versions of the event until you’re left to sift between fact and fantasy, trying to recount every second, every mistake made. Oikawa doesn’t know if he could’ve saved Kuroo, and it haunts his every waking moment, haunts his dreams until they’re nightmares, whispers _killer_ into his ears again and again and again and again until sleep becomes a rarity.

Ushijima is just as rattled, but he has a better grasp at his sanity. He’s begun to worry about Oikawa— and Oikawa knows. Oikawa hates feeling pitied, locks himself in the control room and adjusts and readjusts the course until it’s degrees closer to Earth. He’s fixing what isn’t broken instead of looking at himself, inspecting the bags under his eyes, the ribs that have begun to show. People aren’t meant to exist on freeze dried food this long, and NASA has calculated for them to be eating solids on Mars by now. Oikawa skips meals most days until the hunger becomes a tangible beast inside of him. If it prevents him from working, he eats.

The memory of Hinata— god, he’s talking like _he’s_ the dead one— warms him, wraps around him like a blanket. Longing is an understatement, because Oikawa latches onto the pictures and recordings of him and uses it to keep himself from going insane. He wonders if Ushijima still thinks this love makes him weak. He wonders if Kuroo’s words are right, if the only reason why he’s living is because he yearns to see Hinata again.

“Oikawa,” Ushijima says.

Oikawa spins, sits up straight. “What?” he snaps. There’s no reason for his tone, he’s just restless. Just restless.

“We should talk.”

They stare at each other, point blank for a few moments. Oikawa scoffs.

“They’re dead, I know. I never took you as someone who wants to confront their feelings,” he sighs, aloof, cold.

“You’re grieving,” Ushijima concludes.

“No shit, sherlock.”

“You don’t want to talk about them,” Ushijima states. “That’s okay. I don’t want to either. It hurts.”

Oikawa looks back at him, furrowing his brow. Ushijima is direct, honest, but not often open about his own feelings. They don’t share personal details much, cut off from each other even after being stranded in space together. He stays silent, curious as to if he’ll say anything more.

“We should talk, even if it’s not about… them,” Ushijima tells him, carefully. “Not here. It’s more comfortable in the sleeping quarters.”

Oikawa shakes his head, floating backwards. “No, I— I can’t go there.”

Ushijima doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. It begins to feel like a challenge, and Oikawa can only feel his pride urge him on rather than back.

“Fine,” Oikawa says. “Lead the way.”

They travel through the station, and Oikawa has to pause when they pass the broken arms, sealed off by airlocks. It stings, tightens his chest and makes his mind go hazy. Ushijima pulls him along, keeps him from seizing up entirely. When they reach the cabin, Ushijima enters first, holds open the door for Oikawa and gives him time to react.

The room is much cleaner. Each unused bed has been rolled up, valuables and personal belongings enclosed in bins in each cubby. It hits Oikawa that Ushijima was left to do this by himself, to sort through his dead peers things and tuck them away. He suddenly feels that guilt surround him, _worthless, no good, can’t even face the truth,_ has to suck in a huge breath of air in order to sit down and strap into one of the chairs. Ushijima sits down across from him, looks up and blinks.

“I’m not good at talking,” Ushijima tells him. “I’d put on music, but files got deleted, and all that’s left is Daishou’s “hippy” music.”

Oikawa snorts. “I actually liked it— half of it isn’t even hippy. Never let Kuroo know, though.”

It’s the most he’s talked about him since he died. It stings like a bruise on the knee.

“We can play some then,” Ushijima says, leans over to the computer and types in a few things until _Queen_ breaks through the stations speakers, cutting through the cold silence.

They stay just like that for a few minutes, listening to music and how it echoes through the hollow ship, absorbing the atmosphere and grounding themselves, in Oikawa’s case. After a while, Ushijima clears his throat, pulling something out of his pocket.

“You once asked if I had anything I loved,” he says. Oikawa winces— he continues. “I do. His name is Tendou Satori.”

He holds out the photographs of him and a lanky, red headed man with lizard-like eyes and a devious look about him. They’re both smiling, and many of the photos are just blurry selfies, but one catches Oikawa’s eye— the two of them, sitting in a garden, hunched wide eyed over a tomato plant.

“You garden?” Oikawa asks, looking closer at the photograph.

“Yes. My father owned a farm, so he taught me how,” Ushijima tells him. “I miss… it. Him as well. When we get back, I’d like to work on the farm.”

Oikawa raises a brow. “You won’t stay with NASA?”

Ushijima shakes his head. “This is enough space for a lifetime,” he concludes.

There’s an empty space where Oikawa assumes he’s supposed to share something, but finds himself frozen. There’s so much to say, between apologies and questions or stories, but there’s only one thing on the tip of his tongue.

“Thank you,” Oikawa says, quiet. “Tell me more.”

Because he has every chance to talk about who he loves, but this vulnerability is something rare, something unheard of. Oikawa takes it in stride, tries to keep his own fears and insecurities from showing and just _listens,_ stops taking companionship for granted.

He could’ve been left alone in space. He wasn’t. So he waits until Ushijima asks to tell, keeps himself closed off from the memory of the other crew members and prays that he can make it through the hour unscratched from memory, from pain.

—

_129 days since arrival_

_Don’t you dare come get me._

_Clutches onto the side, feels the force rip through him as the back end of the arm is torn open_ —

— _thrashing him against the walls_ —

 _Kill me, please_ —

 _Tooru_ —

 _Tooru_ —

Oikawa jolts upright, thrashing through the covers as arms wrap around his shoulders, heart pumping a mile a minute, lungs incapable of catching air. Is there a breach in the ship again? His eyes flicker around the room— it’s so dark, the lights must’ve gone out when they were hit—

“Tooru, hon, look at me. It’s just a dream,” Hinata says, hand traveling to brush his cheek.

 _Huh, that’s weird,_ Oikawa thinks. _Shouyou is here._

Everything is spinning, and his breath is still short, but he’s _warm,_ a sensation so rare in space. Oikawa clutches onto Hinata, doesn’t question what he’s doing here, shaking and stuttering heartbeats pouring out onto him as he’s cradled.

“Shouyou, we need— need to fix—”

“Tooru, we’re on earth,” Hinata tells him, pressing their foreheads together. He reaches over, and suddenly, the room is lit up by their bedside light, amber casting shadows around their bedroom. “You’re safe, I’ve got you. Breathe with me.”

It doesn’t feel real, doesn’t feel true. Oikawa looks down at his hands— his hands? Ungloved and scarred? They don’t feel like his hands, too heavy as if his bones were made with lead. Maybe it’s just the gravity, he reasons. He somehow can reason while shaking and sobbing, snot running down his throat.

Oikawa moves, rests his head to Hinata’s chest as he’s laid back down, tries to sync his own exhales with Hinata’s. It’s a process that hurts more than it should, but in the end he’s left calm, world no longer spinning, with Hinata’s hands combing through his hair. He feels loved, feels safe. He’s not used to feeling safe.

Oikawa isn’t sure why he’s crying, but tears run down his face and press into Hinata’s shirt. It smells good, a mix of their shared scents that have amalgamated after living together for so long. It’s one of his shirts Hinata’s wearing too— worn cotton, with a _Twin Peaks_ graphic across the front.

He hates how analytical of everything he can be. Oikawa wants to shut it off, wants to stop thinking and focus on Hinata’s coos, soft, reassuring, the hand drawing shapes on his back. Hinata is humming softly, tangling their legs together. Oikawa tentatively closes his eyes, afraid that the scene of a ship in ruins will meet him on the back of his eyelids.

It’s just darkness. He doesn’t know what’s worse.

“Hey, Tooru, I got you,” Hinata whispers. “I’ve got you, you’re safe here. I love you, you aren’t going anywhere and neither am I, okay?”

Oikawa nods. It must look silly, so he says _yes_ too. His voice cracks through the post crying phlegm stuck in his throat, but Hinata doesn’t comment, shifts to let Oikawa scoot closer into his arms. His feet don’t hang off the bed this way, when they’re lying face to face and Hinata is throwing every limb over him to pull him closer.

Oikawa loves him. He loves him, wants to hang the stars for him, wants to say how much this means to him— how much him dealing with these night terrors means to him. It’s not the first, not the last, and they rattle him every other time he closes his eyes, but Hinata is always there to talk him through it, to kiss his forehead and keep him on the ground.

He wants to tell him, but his eyes are heavy, and so is his body, sleep fogging his mind before he can say another word. He thinks he says _I love you_ one more time before he slips away, but he could just be dreaming. He could always just be dreaming.

—

 _140_ _days since arrival_

Some days, Oikawa spends time alone.

He doesn’t often, but there’s some things he needs to face alone. The first call home to his mother, the first time seeing Ushijima after they land. Kiyoko calls from time to time. He was asked to make a speech, do a talk for new recruits. He didn’t want anyone else to witness the weakness of him having to turn it down.

Today, his feet guide him at the crack of dawn to a nicer area of town, one where the roads start to lose lanes and the scenery grows green. He has to drive most of the way, but walks the last stretch up the hill, along the picket fence that borders gravestones shielded from the sun by large, weeping willow trees. The early morning sunrise washes over the scene, between the crosses and the stone, into Oikawa’s eyes as he opens the gate and steps through, bouquets of flowers held loosely in his hand.

This isn’t the part of the graveyard that Oikawa is looking for. He travels towards the main entrance, where the spaces between stones become close to nothing, where they get smaller and smaller until they break into white crosses that stretch for seemingly forever, around the curve of the earth and out of Oikawa’s vision. He chews on his cheek, and looks at the rows. He’s never been to this sort of cemetery before, but knows the numbers of the memorial gravesites he’s trying to visit. He follows the numbered rows until he reaches ones close to the front, the row itself long and vast in numbers. It’s his row, though, so Oikawa counts the white crosses as he walks between them until he reaches the five in succession he was looking for.

At his feet lays a grave, marked with his own name.

He turns to three first, kneels down at the one that reads _Kuroo Tetsurou_ and smiles, bitter, sweet. Would Kuroo appreciate the sentiment of flowers on his public grave? Oikawa isn’t sure where else he’d leave them— they’ve all got graves back in Japan, with their families, but that feels like a barrier he isn’t sure if he could cross.

After all, he came back. They didn’t.

Oikawa lays the flowers down on his, Daishou, and Akaashi’s graves. They’re peonies, white peonies, fragrant with soft petals in full bloom. They match the white paint of the crosses, stand boldly against the bright green of the grass they’re stuck in. Oikawa stares at it, unsure what this feeling, this soul squeezing feeling, is supposed to be called.

He doesn’t spend time on Ushijima’s grave— he’s alive and well and Oikawa was never quite sure why their graves were left here in the first place. He stands up from where he kneeled, and turns to his own cross, toeing it like a teenage rebel would something they couldn’t care less about. It doesn’t budge. It’s tradition for deceased NASA astronauts to have a cross, but Oikawa isn’t even Christian. He turns up his nose at his own fussiness, feels his stomach coil.  

The cross, the grave, the photos from the funeral— they all serve as a haunting reminder that for a few months in time, Oikawa was _dead._ He was loved and forgotten and cried over, had two separate processions for the same purpose of letting his soul move on when it never left him in the first place. Hinata, his friends, his family— they still _mourned,_ they still felt grief sicken them to their heartstrings when Oikawa was up in orbit, struggling to survive.

It hits him, not for the first time, that there would’ve never been closure had they not come back. No one would quite understand why the ship never made it to Mars, why it tore itself apart and why its inhabitants suffocated in milliseconds. There would be— and are in the cases of the three deceased— no bodies to show. Instead, they float forever frozen in orbit around Mars or beyond, flung to never be found or seen again, tangled with interstellar debris or hitching a ride on an asteroid, dead and forever alone.

Oikawa thinks about Kuroo’s family, thinks about his mothers sitting around the kitchen table, looking over at a family photo on the mantle. He wonders if Kuroo was lying when he said there wasn’t something drawing him back home.

The wind blows through him, and Oikawa turns away from their graves. Looking out onto the field of memories, the field of forgotten soldiers and adventurers forgotten over the years, he watches the grass blow between crosses and headstones. With a deep inhale, Oikawa steps away, leaves them to rest, and continues down the path leading out of the cemetery.

He reaches the road, and takes out his phone, and makes a call.

It rings, once, twice, three times, four—

 _“Hello?”_ a woman’s voice replies.

“Kuroo-san? It’s Oikawa Tooru— your son and I were on the Mars Mission together. I was wondering if you’d like to talk.”

There’s silence, a deep breath. Oikawa digs his shoe into the gravel.

 _“Of course,”_ the woman says, softly. _“Tell me about my son.”_

—

_171 days until arrival_

Oikawa looks down at his personal computer, browsing through songs he’s listened to three thousand and thirty five times, shows he’s binged and finished, entire novels he’s listened to while staring out into the black abyss of space. Oikawa doesn’t mind uncertainties, but he hates feeling trapped, out of control, drifting without purpose or cause or means to change his course. He wonders if they’ve made a new season of his favourite show. He wonders if Lorde finally released new music since he left. He plugs in his hard drive with movies on it, scrolls through the familiar titles.

Space is lonely, no matter how you cut it.

Oikawa reaches for a local comms mic— thank whatever god that may be watching those never failed— and turns it on. There’s no longer the dead static now that they’ve moved away from the debris, from the others.

“Hey, Ushiwaka?” Oikawa says. He’s bored, wonders if the nickname will get a rise.

 _“Oikawa? Is something the matter?”_ Ushijima asks, tone clear, concerned.

Oikawa rolls his eyes. Of course not.

“I have about a week and a half worth of films on this hard drive, and we are in deep space with absolutely nothing to do— you wanna watch some together?” he asks.

Ushijima seems puzzled when he responds. _“This doesn’t sounds as pragmatic as usual. Haven’t you been slaving over your calculations?”_

The white board and mathematics computer look at him dauntingly from his station. “Well, yeah,” Oikawa says. “But you told me not to overwork myself or something, and I need you to be better versed in sci-fi before we get back to Earth.”

He does not say he is desperate for company. On most days, they don’t talk because Oikawa is working or because Ushijima doesn’t know how to. Lord knows they should be.

 _“Okay,”_ Ushijima replies. _“We can watch them in the primary viewing area. I can bring our rations if you think that’s a good idea.”_

Oikawa cracks a smile. “Yeah, bring the ice cream. I’m tired of freeze dried eggs.”

And so that’s what they do. Ushijima brings their pre-portioned meal in its little metallic baggie that all space food comes in, along with the packs of ice cream that make everything worth it. Oikawa cracks open his laptop and wears that one sweater he somehow managed to smuggle on board via Kiyoko’s good word, secures his laptop down with double sided table and velcro and let’s Ushijima choose the film. He looks at the selection quizzically— Oikawa knows his taste is ridiculous and nerdy, but Ushijima makes no comment— and selects a title Oikawa knows like the back of his hand.

“Huh,” Oikawa says, looking at his choice. “Space Odyssey.”

“Is that a bad choice?” Ushijima asks.

Oikawa shakes his head. He’s reminiscing now, but there’s not much he can do to stop it.

“No, it’s the best choice, just… funny.” He pauses before explaining. “Before… you know, everything went to shit, I was trying to see who had watched this to get at Daishou. It’s a classic, really, and it seems like you and him were the only ones who hadn’t seen it.”

There’s a moment where he’s shocked by Oikawa’s honesty. “What’s it about?”

“Evolution, human greed, an artificially intelligent robot that the humans turn on because of their own ego,” Oikawa says, nonchalantly. “Really, I could be offended. I don’t know how you’re in space without watching it.”

He could make a joke about Daishou dying before he got to see it— he knows he can be cynical, but he holds the venom on his tongue. Ushijima is hard to read, but smiles, a rare sight when you’re half dead and floating without course or direction.

“Well, we should continue and watch it then,” Ushijima says.

Oikawa looks away, out at the stars twinkling a thousand lightyears away, dead light travelling the distance he never will.

“Okay,” Oikawa says. “Let’s get to it.”

That’s the first time Oikawa can stop thinking without shutting himself off. It feels less numbing than he thought it would, feels a little more like healing than he’s comfortable with. That night, he still has terrors in his dreams, but it’s okay. He looks at the photo of Hinata that he keeps by his side. _Baby steps._

—

_182 days since arrival_

It’s a matter of time before Oikawa needs to talk to NASA again. The way he phrases it makes it seem like he hasn't already— he has, but this time, it'll be in depth. This time, it'll be play-by-plays, and talks about his future with the space agency. Hinata kisses him goodbye at the front of the building, says _I'll pick you up in a few hours, ‘kay?_ before leaving with a wave, not turning around until Oikawa enters the building.

Oikawa doesn't know how to say the only future he needs is the one with Hinata in it. He just doesn't.

The building itself isn't that haunting, and walking through it doesn't give Oikawa too many qualms. The stares of people as he passes does, but he does his best to shake them off, skipping up the steps as he makes his way to the offices where he needs to be, where Kiyoko and a few other higher ups sit around a long table.

“Oikawa, please, have a seat,” the man on the left says. He’s balding, and very, very important. Oikawa doesn’t quite remember his name, but follows the instruction anyways.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” the man says. “After all that you’ve had to go through, we all agree that if you would like to leave the agency there’d be no bitterness—”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Oikawa cuts in. Kiyoko looks up from her clipboard, expression unreadble. “This here— it’s everything I’ve worked for.”

There’s a beat of silence where everyone in the room seems to sigh in relief. “Good,” Kiyoko says. “Then, of course, you should know that you haven’t been offically removed from the astronaut program, only on standby. There’s lots of factors at play, but besides your knee, we don’t have any reason to remove you from it. Although, we don’t have and plans in the short term of five years for you to be back in orbit.”

It’s then, that Oikawa really and truly freezes.

_Back into orbit—_

“We were thinking it’d be beneficial for you to do talks, speeches with some of our trainees. Of course, the experiment you and Kuroo were working on is something I assume you want to continue on—”

_Close the door—_

_Oikawa, close the door now—_

“Oikawa?” Kiyoko says. Her voice is soft, and she’s leaned over to place a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, you two, do you mind giving us a moment?”

The man who was just speaking agrees inaudibly, him and his assistant leaving the room as Oikawa stares catatonic at the table in front of him. It’s solid wood, but someone scratched it. He wonders who.

“Oikawa, there’s no rush for any of this,” Kiyoko assures him. “No one can understand what you’ve had to go through, and we only urge you to consider these options. You won’t be doing any of this alone.”

Oikawa nods dumbly. He isn’t sure if he’s computing everything she says correctly right now. “I’m— I’ll be okay.”

Kiyoko purses her lips. Oikawa isn’t sure if that’s a bad thing, if he was supposed to say something else there. The big meeting room suddenly feels a lot smaller.

“Oikawa, you’re aware that your benifits cover a therapist, free of charge, right?” Kiyoko asks. “It doesn’t take long to set up appointments, and I think right now that should be what you’re focusing on.”

Oikawa blinks. He wasn’t expecting that.

“Consider it,” Kiyoko tells him. “Before you consider anything else proposed, consider this. We can meet on another day— I’ll send you some contact information tonight. All we needed was to sort a few things out, and we managed that.”

“Okay, yeah,” Oikawa says, standing up. It’s more things to think about than he really wants to right now. It gives him a headache. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“Thank you for coming,” Kiyoko says with a small bow of her head. “I’ll see you soon.”

—

_197 days since arrival_

Hinata lies on Oikawa’s chest, Oikawa’s hands tangled in his ginger hair. Hinata hums softly as he works his fingers through the strands, soft breeze blowing through open curtains, drifting scattered sunlight across the living room. It’s comfortably silent— they’ve spoken enough about preparations for the wedding, _the wedding,_ and worries and each other. Now, they breathe in time with each other, simply cherishing each other’s warmth as the day dwindles on into night, both content with holding and being held.

Oikawa thinks back to earlier that day, to sitting on a strange chair in a strange person’s office drinking his tea and trying to prepare himself for spilling his guts, for talking about things he didn’t want to face. He remembers the words of the doctor in the nice shirt and what they said to him— _you don’t have to talk about it all right now, just tell me what it does to you. You can tell whoever, whenever you think it’s right._

Oikawa isn’t sure what they meant by _when it’s right._ Every time he tries to say something, to talk about what happened after the incident, his words become choked in his throat. He _wants_ to tell Hinata more than anything, but he doesn’t know how.

Kiyoko had sent him an email after that day they talked. It had contact information in it, but at the bottom was an enormous digital text file from the interstellar laptop he’d never bothered to take back after landing. He knows what the document contains, knows all he’d have to do is ask Hinata to read it.

There’s a worry, nestled deep in the back of Oikawa’s mind. It’s a lingering fear, of baggage and burdens and Hinata realizing things about Oikawa that might leave him stranded. He knows, logically, that that wouldn’t happen. It’s hard to turn of the fears sometimes.

Hinata presses his nose into Oikawa’s chest, arms wrapping around his waist again. Oikawa argues with himself— there’d be no rush to read them, he wouldn’t have to choke up the words and say everything wrong. He looks down at Hinata, smells the coffee scent that sticks to his clothes. He's already seen Oikawa vulnerable, has seen him so close to shattering and has seen him in a thousand different pieces. He’s known Oikawa to be dead and alive and somewhere in between, a guarantee that _someone_ is coming back but no certainties on who. Oikawa realizes his hands have stopped drawing lazy circles, realizes he’s been holding his breath.

“Shouyou,” Oikawa whispers. His voice catches, and Hinata looks up, big brown eyes wide and loving. “Can— do you mind reading something? Not now but… soon. I want you to read it.”

“Of course,” Hinata says, shifting so that he can face Oikawa. “What is it?”

Oikawa licks his lips— they’re chapped and dry. “It’s a testimonial of sorts. A diary, from, ah, a few months while I was gone. In space.”

Hinata’s face changes, brightens as his eyes soften, hands reaching forwards to caress Oikawa’s cheek. “I’ll read it Tooru,” he tells him. Softly, he presses his lips to Oikawa’s, chaste and sweet. “Thank you.”

Oikawa’s heart flutters. “I love you, Shouyou.”

“I love you too,” Hinata murmurs, voice fond as he runs his thumb softly over Oikawa’s cheek.

The weight in the back of Oikawa’s mind shrivels, shrinks. He doesn’t think about it, but doesn’t push it away, just relishing in the warm evening sunlight and Hinata, Hinata, Hinata.

—

_96 days until arrival_

When Oikawa hears the creak and the groan, the sounds of machinery working and whirring, he jolts awake.

There is nothing wrong. It’s just the broken parts of the ship, breaking off and floating, keeping Oikawa up and forcing him to adjust and re-adjust course. Still, he wakes up in a cold sweat, already bracing for impact, already trying to survey what went wrong.

Nothing is wrong, he reminds himself again. Nothing is wrong.

It all feels like a lie, like someone is forcing false claims down his throat. The click of something turning on startles him, echoes in the empty space, in the dead silent of the spaceship. There are things he needs to get to, things he needs to work on. They’re weeks from reaching Earth if nothing goes wrong, and in Oikawa’s experience, something _always_ goes wrong. His stomach twists as he writhes his way out of his sleeping bag, fingers brushing the photograph of Hinata on instinct as he goes out to search for Ushijima.

He has an idea— one that could make or break the mission.

(Black and white— he’s always been known to think that way.)

“Ushijima?” Oikawa calls out, pushing himself through the tunnels of the station. “You awake?”

They haven’t slept on a schedule since the incident. It’s rare that Oikawa falls asleep orchestrated, that he makes some kind of regiment like Ushijima to maximize the hours of rest. He steals sleep like he’s chasing time from the devil, promising himself to last another day.

“Oikawa? Is there something you need?” Ushijima replies. He’s awake, sitting in the primary viewing area. He’s got a book in his hands, but closes it when Oikawa enters, tucking it under one arm so it won’t float away.

“Yes, actually,” Oikawa replies. He looks Ushijima straight in the face, ignoring the mind numbing silence and the part of him that screams. “I want to do a spacewalk.”

This breaks Ushijima’s composure, makes his brows knots together as his lips purse. “That’s a horrible idea. There’s debris still floating behind us and we aren’t sure how well our local communications will last. Why do you want to do this?” he asks.

The stars behind them twinkle, shining peacefully through the tension. “Because,” Oikawa reasons. “What if our communications satellite receiver is fine? What if it’s just covered or is something I can fix? Don’t you want to be able to talk with mission control before we land? To let them know we’re still alive?”

“Oikawa, they’ll know we’re alive by now,” Ushijima tells him. “Their satellites will have spotted our ship adjusting course.”

“That— that isn’t the same,” Oikawa protests. He thinks of Hinata, sitting on their kitchen counter, staring blankly at the wall. “I want them to know _we_ are alive. To relay what happened before we land. You know I’m right, Ushijima. This could be great for us.”

Ushijima’s cold glare bores into Oikawa’s skull. Oikawa’s heartbeat thumps heavy in his ears as he await Ushijima’s response. Despite everything, he is the commander, is still in charge of the mission and responsible for its outcome. Oikawa doesn’t always like following rules, but understands that this idea is something that is unanimous in agreement or not done at all. He wrings out his hands behind his back, sharpening his own gaze when Ushijima sighs.

“I can see why this would work,” Ushijima says. “Do you have a tool kit? Have you inspected the suits for breaches? Are you sure our remaining airlock is functional?”

Oikawa grins, tension leaving his shoulders. “Ushijima, do you not know me at all? I’ve been planning this for weeks,” he tells him.

“Check again,” Ushijima commands. “And suit up— we’re doing this now while we’re set on course.”

It’s methodological again, scientific again, is back to the roots both men know like the back of their hands. Oikawa explains what he plans on doing— he hasn’t spacewalked since the incident, but knows where he’s headed— double checks his tethers and his boots and his oxygen tanks. He won’t be going far, just sticking to the station as best as possible. Ushijima turns on HAL in his wake, letting the ship steer itself as he moves to the main control room, setting up his headset as Oikawa slips into his EMU suit.

The helmet is always the strangest part, the barrier between you and the rest of the entire universe just a pane of glass. He wriggles his fingers in the gloves, familiarizing himself with the textures as he makes his way to the airlock, securing the door behind him with a hiss.

He remembers the last time he did that, when he doomed Kuroo to his death. He holds his breath and tries not to picture his face.

The room depressurizes, and the outer door opens, leaving Oikawa in a vacuum of silence and air, where the entire galaxy is splayed out in front of him, no barrier. He could keep going, could unhook the tether and let go until his tanks run out, hoping to be picked up by aliens or an asteroid somewhere out there.

“There is no time for daydreaming when you’re in open space,” Ushijima reminds him in his ear. “Go in, get out. Don’t dawdle.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Oikawa huffs, pushing himself out and grabbing onto the side of the ship.

He heaves himself up and towards the top of the ship, tugging on the tether once more to check it’s security. When it pulls taunt and doesn’t budge, he straightens, surveying the wreckage of the ship around him.

The majority of the arms have been torn off, but pieces of mechanics stay caught in the ship itself and each other, leaving a trail of debris at either end, dragging them back without knowing. Some of the handles look looser than Oikawa would like, but they don’t budge when he grabs onto them, supporting his weight as he climbs his way over to where the receiver should be.

The silence of space is pierced only by Oikawa’s breathing, none of the nearby moving and creaking debris making any sound like you’d expect them to. It’s eerie, haunting, makes Oikawa less comfortable than he wants to admit as that suffocating silence creeps up on him, surrounding him in nothing but the ringing of his own ears.

Oikawa tugs the tool kit with him as he settles down next to the receiving area. The smaller ones are completely ruined, some broken off, but the main one could be salvageable. He looks at the slash across the dish, at how it’s completely ripped in half. Carefully, Oikawa begins to pull off the other smaller receivers, chucking them out of the way of his work. He doesn’t expect for one of them to prove itself snagged in the main, floating to the left with resistance, half of the receiver still attached.

“Shit,” Oikawa whispers, reaching forwards to grab it. He keeps one hand steady on the ladder, supporting himself as he leans out, trying to grab the only half of the dish he has left. He purses his lips, reaching a little further, only to lurch forwards, spinning as his hand narrowly misses the dish.

Oikawa seizes up, remembering all of his training, remembering that the tether is still there. He grabs onto his rope, looking around for the dish, praying to whatever twisted higher being that it is still nearby, can still be fixed. He’s met with the sight of it floating off into the distance, too far to be grabbed.

Gritting his teeth and cursing himself, Oikawa starts pulling himself back towards the ship. Odds are that the handle, already loose from the accident, popped off under his weight. It’s a stupid mistake of engineering that makes him want to scream out into the nothingness as he reaches the ship again, doing his best to get back upright and where the remnants of the receiver are.

He’s against the ship when he feels the rope, once taunt under his hands, go slack, fear instantly driven into his heart as he looks up, watching the once tethered end float up, handle still attached on one end.

 _“Fuck!”_ Oikawa cries out. “Ushi-Ushijma, the tether snapped.”

 _“Get ahold of something,”_ Ushijima commands, voice already strained. “Now, _before you’re dead too.”_

Oikawa reaches out as the ship moves forward, grabbing onto another of the faulty handles as he grows closer to the wrecked back end of the ship. He manages to get a hold on it, body jerking forwards with the force of the new direction. Oikawa swings his other hand forwards to clutch onto the wreckage of old wires and metallic framing, grasping it for dear life as he attempts to climb up to the whole part of the station.

 _I can do this,_ he thinks to himself. His ears swarm with a tidal force of ringing, of dead silence screaming as loud as any sound he’s heard before. _I can do this._

Oikawa reaches forwards, right hand grabbing onto a handle. He tugs— it doesn’t budge. With his other hand, he reaches for another, grasping onto it firmly, sighing in relief when he realizes it isn’t going to budge. Slowly, he tugs himself up, ready to be done with this spacewalk only to feel something jerk him back.

Looking down, Oikawa spots his right leg tangled in the loose tether, the rope binding it tight. It’s caught in the debris of wires and metal, curled around like a knot and keeping Oikawa wedged in place. Oikawa’s blood runs cold at the sight of it— _it shouldn’t be hard to get out of this,_ he tells himself. _Twist my body, pull up, and it should come undone._

And then, something goes wrong.

As Oikawa turns his body to loosen the rope’s hold, the handles slip out from his hands, jerking him backwards, sending him reeling back with only a knot around his leg to keep him secured. Oikawa squeezes his eyes together, waiting for the hit— and it comes, shooting pain up his leg as it _pops_ unnaturally at the strain of keeping him tethered. For a moment, as the pain rips through his entire body in a way he cannot describe, he sees the face of Hinata, laughing and glowing under the same stars that surround him now. Oikawa shuts his eyes, twisting back as he thrashes to make it back to safety, that same image burnt onto the back of his retinas as Ushijima speaks.

 _“Oikawa, you’re screaming,”_ Ushijima says into his ear. _“You need to calm down—”_

“My leg— it’s caught—” Oikawa croaks, face contorting as he swings back around to clutch onto the mess. “Handles broke—”

 _“Can you get it out?”_ Ushijima asks.

“I— I think so,” Oikawa says. His sinuses swell as his eyes cloud over, tears blocking his vision as the pain continues to ebb from his distorted leg. He blinks heavy, squeezing his eyes shut as he counts— _three, two, one—_ before ripping his leg from the debris, not being gentle in any way shape or form. He cries out again, but his leg is loose— immobile from pain, but loose.

With shaking arms and shock coursing through him, Oikawa grapples with the handles that are left, quickly and hastily clamoring back to the airlock. Head pounding, he swings in, glad for the lack of gravity as he pulls down the lever that seals him off from the vacuum, glad for his space suit as the airlock depressurizes and the main door opens, revealing a worried Ushijima who rushes in.

Oikawa doesn’t remember much after that. He remembers being helped out of his suit, blinded by tears, remembers being carried to the once lounge area where Ushijima tied him down, saying, too calmly for someone who’s seen this much, _it’ll only hurt a little bit, stay still,_ as he snaps his knee back into place.

When asked about the most painful moment of his life, Oikawa will always think of that, think of being left vulnerable in his skin tight underclothes, think of the pain shooting up and down his leg as he moves his knee again, joint clicking unnaturally as he does so. He remembers tying himself down in his bed, tears pooling in the zero gravity of space. They wet his pillow, Oikawa holding a death grip onto the blanket as he remembers being so close to _nothingness_ that he could taste what death is like, could see white on the back of his eyelids and his blood turn to ice.

He remembers seeing Hinata, as clear as day, remembers the distance between him. It aches and it hurts and it lets sleep evade him for the nights to come until he’s left writing down his thoughts into his laptop instead of formulas, writing _Shouyou, yesterday, I almost died_ again and again until the story is described forty different ways. Sometimes it warps back to the first incident, or recalls the times where he stayed up looking at the stars. Most days, it’s a cry for survival, a dying man’s wish to see the one he loves one more time.

 _One more time,_ Oikawa pleads to the universe. _Let me see him one more time._

—

_200 days since arrival_

Three days later, while Oikawa stands in the café covering for Hinata late at night, footsteps ring heavy above him, the sounds of someone barrelling down the steps thumping through the walls. Hinata Shouyou bursts through the door that connects his apartment and the café, tears already staining his cheeks, eyes so bright and awake despite the hour. Oikawa whips his head around to face him, softens at the sight of Hinata running into his arms, wrapping his arms around his chest.

“I love you,” Hinata whispers, choked with tears and raw emotion. “I love you, I love you. Thank you for showing me.”

Oikawa knows instantly what this is about, a thousand indescribable emotions rising through his bloodstream as he buries his head into Hinata’s hair, humming because this is all he ever wanted, all he ever wished for when he was drifting without cause nor purpose in space. Hinata pulls back to look up at him, sniffling slightly, reaches up to swipe a thumb under Oikawa’s eye. They’re both crying, silently, smiling despite having to relive what is second on Oikawa’s list of worst days of his life, so overjoyed to still have each other.

“Hey, Shouyou?” Oikawa says, biting his lip, smile so hard to contain. “Can- can we talk about it?”

Hinata tugs him down, forces him to lean so that their faces grow closer. “Whenever you want to, Tooru, I’m gonna be here,” he promises. “Forever.”

—

_251 days since arrival_

Oikawa stands, sunset at his back, crowd murmuring in the audience. He fixes his tie again, dragging his toe in the dirt. There isn't anything that can stop his heart from palpitating now, standing underneath the floral arch, Iwaizumi, Hanamaki, and Matsukawa at his side.

“Hey, if he was gonna get cold feet, it'd be ages ago,” Iwaizumi tells him.

“Fix your collar pretty boy, he'll be coming by soon,” Hanamaki says, punching his shoulder.

They jostle for a few moments, Oikawa laughing as his hands fly up to his collar to tighten it one last time. It's his _wedding day,_ the best day of his life, playing out like a fairy tale or a movie before his eyes. They're getting married in a park by a river, warm summer breeze blowing through his hair as he waits for Hinata to arrive at the end of their makeshift aisle. Big bouquets of sunflowers lay in bushels at each row, woven into the archway and pinned onto Oikawa’s white suit jacket.

A tinkling of a bell interrupts Oikawa’s worrying, makes his back straighten reflexively as the entire crowd turns around to face the back, eyes leaving Oikawa and looking towards the entering figure.

Hinata’s younger sister Natsu walks down, yellow petals fluttering down out of her hands as she skips down. Behind her, Takeru follows, little blue velvet cushion carrying two gold wedding bands. Oikawa rocks back and forth on his feet, chewing on the inside of his cheek, practically buzzing in anticipation as the last two people walk up to the aisle.

Oikawa can't make out Hinata from under the lace of his veil, but it doesn’t stop his entire body from melting at the sight of him, arm in arm with his mother, walking slowly down the aisle with that same skip to his step that he never seemed to lose. Oikawa realizes he must look like a fool— eyes already brimming with tears, hands wringing and flitting about. He’s lovestruck, starstruck, watching Hinata’s mother kiss his hands as Hinata turns to face him, tilting his veiled head up to Oikawa.

Slowly, with hands shaking just enough that Oikawa can’t care, he grabs the hem of the veil, gingerly lifting it up and overtop of Hinata’s head. What is revealed is big, warm eyes, tracked with tears already slipping down his cheeks, lips pulled into a smile that splits across Hinata’s entire face as he looks up at Oikawa, hands reaching out to tangle with his own.

“Hey you,” Hinata whispers. “Did y’miss me?”

Oikawa laughs from the surreality of it all, swallowing the knot in his throat before nodding. “Yeah, but I knew you’d show up,” he tells him through cracking chords. “I love you, Shouyou.”

“I love you too,” Hinata murmurs.

Those words are shared in secret, quiet and mumbled as everyone readies themselves for the transition into the ceremony. It isn’t traditional as it could be, nor as long and winded as many others are. Even in it’s shortness, Oikawa barely remembers a thing the minister says, too focused on Hinata’s soft hands holding his, the way he smiles and keeps their eyes fixed together. Underneath the red tones of the sun he _glows_ like a god or something glittery, like gold or precious metals, like the engagement ring twinkling on his left hand.

“Tooru,” Hinata starts, the ceremony already reaching the vows before Oikawa has processed the fact of _Hinata Shouyou becoming Oikawa Shouyou, Shouyou becoming his husband._ Hinata giggles, wiping his eyes of tears before continuing.

“When we first spoke, you had coffee stains on your sweater and sleep in your eyes, mathematics studies you, let’s all be honest, were working three weeks ahead on, half finished in the ludicrous hour you decided to show up to my café,” he starts. The crowd chuckles, and Oikawa _remembers,_ remembers staying up until three am and paying more attention to the barista than his work, to the sunshine saccharine smile than his physics. “It was like clockwork, you’d always be there. And then we spoke, and you came more often, and I realized then that I didn’t want you to leave. I never wanted you to go.”

Those words have sting to them, have weight that no one feels more heavily than Oikawa as he listens, throat knotting with the memory of parting ways for two years of purgatory called uncharted space travel. Hinata softens at Oikawa’s expression of remembrance, squeezes his hands a little tighter before continuing.

“I remember kissing you when you graduated at the top of your class and were officially named an astronaut, I remember escaping the city with you to watch the stars and cooking in our little kitchen above the shop. You, for all of your redeeming qualities and work ethic, cannot cook to save your life,” he adds. “But I love you either way, because you make tea just how I like it and know when it’s okay to try and pull me out of bed, and when shift work makes me a monster you never flinch, and I love you for all those bad jokes and nerdy obsessions and books you made me read that I now call my favourites.

“When you left for Mars, there was a part of me, a selfish, stupid part of me, that wanted to hold you back. But, disastrous or not, that— this— was your dream, to be where no man has gone before, to have the stars within arms reach. And even if you never made it to the red planet, you did something that people rarely do, and that’s survive.” Hinata’s voice grows choked, knuckles white as his grip on Oikawa’s hand tightens. “In those months where I wasn’t sure if you were living or dead, I clung to these numbers I was given— the odds of your survival— ten thousand to one. And you came back, and I… realized I knew all along, that we were always meant to be together.”

Oikawa wants to kiss him, wants to hold him so close, wants to say _I love you I love you_ over and over again until the words are all they know—

“So, Tooru, I vow to you to never leave you stranded, to be what tethers you back to this blue planet when you start drifting, to help you when you stumble and make you coffee at absurd hours of the day. You will never be lonely, or broken, because you are whole and wonderful and something I- I am so unbelievably fantastically lucky to be apart of. I want to make you better, to make this work because I know we can. You walked into my life and made it beautiful, and I want to make yours brighten for the rest of time.”

There’s a break for applause, where Hinata leans forwards to rest his head on Oikawa’s shoulder, pressing his face into the jacket of his suit as Oikawa murmurs _Shouyou I love you, oh my god I love you_ in the moments leading up to his own vows, mind scrambled and haywire with adoration for the ginger haired whirlwind in front of him, smiling through the tears that continue to run down his face.

“I— I don’t know how to follow this up,” Oikawa says honestly. “I’m… not a poet. I know numbers better than words and am a know it all when it comes to space and am the hardest person to deal with when I won’t shut up. But… meeting you changed everything. I thought I knew what I wanted from life— to go to space, to travel beyond the limits, to never look back— but you, Shouyou, you gave me a reason to look back. You gave me a type of home I never found.”

Taking a deep breath to centre himself, Oikawa continues. “A few days before the Mars Mission II station collided with Mars’ observatory satellite, I was working with the late Kuroo Tetsurou on an experiment. Hours were grueling, and results were far and few between, and he told me— told me that what makes me keep going, persevere, _survive_ is the connection I have to you. That undeniable tether that is better than any rope, any handle, any— any— any kind of thing that could keep me stationery. You’re my sun, Shouyou— my centre of gravity, the rock in the middle of this universe I will always go back to.”

And it’s true, the most honest words OIkawa has ever spoken. Hinata can barely keep his head up, chewing on his lip as he stares with reveration at Oikawa, cheeks a furious shade of red as Oikawa stumbles on.

“In the end, when I was four feet from death’s door, with only a dislocated knee keeping me from floating into open space, I— I saw you. And I like to think that’s what made me get back up, keep going. Because even if— even if you still thought I was dead, I wanted to see you again, one last time,” Oikawa tells him. “And you know, through all of my hardships in this career, I’ve seen so much, experienced so much. But the best part of it all wasn’t having Mars at my fingertips or being where- where no one had gone before— the best part was meeting you, Shouyou. Falling in love with you.

“So I guess what I’m promising— what I’m vowing— here is that I’ll be your crutch, your adventure, you home away from home. I’ll give you the universe that caused me so much adversity because you deserve it, name every star I find after you and dedicate every discovery to the person who lead me to survive long enough to discover it. I’ll hold you when it’s cold, and make you tea how you like it when you— or I— can’t sleep, I’ll be what makes you smile when it’s raining and you’re drenched and nothing is going right. We have undoubtedly had the longest distance relationship, which proves that even at our worsts, we will be there, will be propping the other up and saying _hey, you got this far._ And Shouyou— I would’ve— I couldn’t have got this far without you. I wouldn’t be who I am now without you, and I can’t tell you how much I love you for all you’ve done.”

Hinata buckles in front of him, leaning his weight onto Oikawa’s chest and hugging him tight as the minister walks through the last of the formalities. He slinks back to clutching onto his hands as he whispers _I do,_ grins oh so knowingly as Oikawa echoes the line with a croak in his voice, looking up at him and drawing Oikawa in with those big, brown eyes. This is their little gravity, their little orbit around each other that doesn’t falter as the minister pronounces them newlyweds with a joyous laugh and a smile.

So Shouyou leans forwards into Tooru’s arms, lets himself be swept off his feet and into the kiss of a lifetime, warm and giddy and sugar sweet, teeth clinking through their giddy smiles and foreheads pressed together in effort to fuse closer, closer. And Tooru kisses Shouyou because he is the air he needs to breathe, pulls him close because he doesn’t want to float away.

Eventually they break apart, still smiling gleefully, still wrapped in each other’s arms. Shouyou chucks the bouquet out into the crowd, but neither look to see who’s caught it, wrapped up in each other as they make their way back down the aisle and towards the tent were dinner is being served, arm in arm, hand in hand.

“I love you,” Tooru says again.

Shouyou smiles up at him, flicking the veil from his face. “I love you too.”

The tent is massive and white, lanterns strung along the ceiling and casting amber light down onto the grass. There’s speeches from friends and family, and Tooru has to contain himself from crying again when Iwaizumi does his speech as the best man, people approaching them from all sides with congratulations. Tooru keeps his eyes trained on Shouyou the entire night, on how he laughs and streaks frosting across his cheek, how he blushes when Tooru leans down and kisses it off.

Later that night, they dance to Bowie under the moonlight, swaying back and forth with the rhythm of acoustic guitar filling their ears, Shouyou’s head resting on Tooru’s chest, listening the the steady beat of his heart through his white suit jacket— mismatched with his black pants. There are declarations of love whispered throughout the night, as they kick off their shoes and dip their toes in the river, as they sneak away from the crowds of people to live in their own world, as the pair sip champagne while dancing barefoot in the grass, sharing a waltz with the kids to make a fairy tale come true.

That night they leave in a rented convertible with the rooftop down, blowing kisses to their friends and family as they drive off towards the little café where they’ve made their home, so special even compared to this night because of where they lay their hearts. And Tooru kisses Shouyou like the tide kisses the sand, pulls him closer and closer and sits him on his lap, snorts at his shocked expression when he finds the garter on his thigh and sends them both into a fit of laughter that leaves their ribs aching and their hearts yearning for more.

So Tooru kisses Shouyou because he’s all he has, worships the body he’s memorized and the mind he’s loved for so long. Shouyou pulls him down to Earth, loves him like gravity, makes everything spin, finds home in his bones and the space between his hips.

It’s shimmering, and it’s gold, like the two wedding bands in entwined hands against the crumpled sheets. Outside the window, Mars twinkles, a mere red dot in the sky. Neither pay it any attention, pay it any mind. All the colour in the world exists in the way Shouyou smiles when Tooru says _I love you,_ in the way that reverent love carries them across the solar system.

This is their home, no matter the space, the universe, the worlds between them, This is their home.

—

_0 days until arrival._

_“Marry me,” Oikawa whispers, staring down into Hinata’s eyes, holding the smaller in his embrace. “Marry me, Shouyou.”_

And not even Mars could keep them apart.

—

_Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two._

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this hell mess chat me up at spacegaykj on tumblr and leave comments kudos whatever and tell me what references you got and ill give you stickers


End file.
